The doorway pages can be considered as the pages which are used for spamdexing. This means spamming the index of the search engines by inserting different keywords and phrases for the search engines and the users. In this case, two different pages are generally created for the users and the search engines.
Let us go through some examples of the doorway pages provided by the SEO Expert:
- Pages which are generated for redirecting visitors to the relevant portion of the sites.
- The pages which have various domain names or the pages which are redirected to specific locations or regions for various users.
- Similar pages which are very close to the search results for defining a clear browsing hierarchy.
Now, Google take algorithmic actions to the websites which are trying to increase their search footprints through the doorway pages. Google will possibly target the pages which are containing large number of doorway pages. You can ask the following questions to yourself to ensure whether your sites contain doorway pages or not:
- Do the sites exist like an island? Whether the sites are very difficult to navigate from one part to the other and the links are only created for the search engines?
- Are the sites creating duplicate items like the product, location etc that already exists in the website? And the duplicity is only done for increasing the search traffic. ?
- Are the pages only created to draw traffic, and do not contain any valuable content?
- Are the pages ranked for general terms in the search engines, but the actual content is specific in the websites?
- Is the purpose of optimization for the visitors and the search engines different and do not possess any connection between them?
Can We Consider Landing Pages as Doorway Pages?
When you are running a PPC campaign and have created an eye-catching lading page, specific audience will definitely get attracted. The page can particularly be optimized for the search queries and may not be accessible from other parts of the site. This can exhibit as an issue for the search ranking of Google. It may demote the page from the organic search listings. But if you possess the no index tag to the lading page, then it may not be included in the search results of Google.
Can the Location Pages Be Considered as Doorway Pages?
Location pages are those where particular locations are mentioned where the services are specifically being rendered. For example, if you are providing plumbing service in Toronto, then you can mention some specific cities in Toronto to target your audience easily like ‘Plumber in New market’, ‘Plumber in Richmond Hill’ etc. The aim of the pages is generally to rank high in the specific location where the services are provided. But if you contain too many pages like these, they may feature similar information. Google will always prefer a single landing page instead of multiple pages for every neighborhood or city. As we are still not sure what Google expects from these pages, it should always be advisable that a minimum amount of uniqueness is maintained in all the pages.
As we are not sure of the impact of the algorithm, we should be safe with our landing pages and avoid creating the doorway pages. Google will generally take action on the tricky doorway pages which are redirecting to other pages. But it may also happen that Google is negatively affecting the ranks of the local search engine results. Like the Panda and the Penguin update, the doorway page algorithm update will soon be added to the list of Google updates.